Our soldiers are mortals who will suffer, not superheroes

THE eagles are gathering around the barren borders of Afghanistan but, given the barrenness within, they're likely to find only slim pickings. What are we going to do there, to whom, and how?

After all, that country has only the most rudimentary elements of a developed industrial society and now, after more than 20 years of war and civil war, there is almost nothing left to bomb. What do you go for - airports, power stations, air defence systems, fuel dumps, headquarters, any scrap you can find of the Taliban's patchy infrastructure? It is a morning's work.

As we know, it's not the country itself or its trampled, half-starved, disease-ridden populace that we want to hurt, but Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaeda network and his Taliban protectors. Presumably, therefore, we get Pakistan to cut off the military supplies with which it sustains the Taliban while special forces - American, and of course our own SAS - perform their classic role of covert reconnaissance deep in the Afghan wilderness. Eventually, we hope, they identify al-Qaeda personnel and facilities and direct commando or airborne forces in surgical strikes until we find, in the last and deepest cave, the man himself.

If only it were that straightforward. The SAS has the unwanted reputation of being a breed of supermen capable of anything. They are not; they are better than average soldiers with better than average training, equipment and motivation, but they are soldiers none the less; if you cut them they bleed, like the rest of us. There are not many of them; regular SAS squadrons are reckoned to total only 200 to 300 men. They know their own limitations better than anyone and, perhaps unlike their American equivalents, they also know what sustained operations in a country like Afghanistan mean.

We are seeking a few individuals in an inhospitable area the size of France. It is mostly rock. There are huge distances and we simply cannot deploy enough soldiers trained in covert reconnaissance. In baking summer there is no shade, no shadow to hide in. In freezing winter - which is approaching - there is no shelter. Almost every shepherd has a Kalashnikov and regards almost every stranger as a potential enemy. Even if you find a friendly shepherd, the language barrier will be formidable.

You may have the advantage of helicopter insertion and resupply, but your water-lines are very long, which means you have to march with crippling extra weight. Anyone who has done it, even in the Brecon Beacons, will know what a burden and a necessity water is. In Afghanistan you cannot slake your thirst in the next water-hole, village well or stream, because that's what the locals do, and you will be seen.

Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda are a loose band of brothers whose headquarters is wherever they happen to be. You would be extremely lucky to take them out by bombing, or chance to be watching the village where they stop tonight. And the more you try, the more special forces you infiltrate, the more likely it is that something will go wrong. It needn't be anything major in casualty terms, but an unsatisfactory skirmish could test American resolve to the full. Remember Somalia?

During the mid-Sixties Britain fought an undeclared and successful war in Yemen, mainly involving the SAS. Operating conditions resembled those in Afghanistan, as did the attitudes and habits of the enemy. In 1965 a four-man SAS patrol was captured. It was bad luck that got them caught, and worse was to follow. They were castrated and disembowelled alive, and eventually beheaded. Their heads were stuck on poles and displayed. I served with the brother of one of them in the Parachute Regiment, where the story was widely known, though it never had much publicity. The same could happen in Afghanistan tomorrow, but the consequences would be very different.

As President Putin might have told Tony Blair over vodka in his dacha, the Russian army became horribly familiar with this sort of cruelty during their Afghan war. Young Russian soldiers were filmed by their captors as they were flayed - skinned - alive and had their tongues cut out. These films never reached the Russian people; they were censored by the Soviet government, and this was, anyway, before the age of the internet.

Those same captors would in this campaign broadcast their film on Al-Jazeera, their Arab television network of choice. Even if CNN were persuaded not to show it, it would still be seen by millions in America because, within half an hour, it would be on the internet. Would this strengthen the resolve of the American people and their support for their government or would it, like President Carter's bungled rescue attempt during the Iranian hostage crisis, gravely weaken both? Nothing in politics succeeds like the successful exercise of force, but nothing is more damaging than its failure.

This war against terrorism needs to be played long. The lack of obvious action so far is a sign that Washington, perhaps partly on advice from London, understands this. But it will take political courage, resolution and constant education to get an impatient media to understand that Doing Something Soon may be worse than - seemingly - doing nothing. In fact, governments aren't doing nothing and there will probably be a dramatic Something, but most of the important action will be out of sight.

Discreet diplomacy backed by reward and punishment - getting states who would not publicly admit to it to deny terrorists their support - will be key. So will intelligence operations, technical and human, because that is ultimately how we will discover whose door bin Laden is hiding behind. That process will take a long time. And although you cannot extirpate hatred among those who love to hate, you can deny them the means of expressing their hatred. The unsensational seizures of terrorist assets and funds will have a long term degrading effect.

It may take years, but gradually all involved in these outrages will be identified. Satellites will find bin Laden's vehicles and identify his means of communication, agents will infiltrate or get alongside even the tightest networks. One by one - as the Israelis did after the 1972 Munich massacre of their athletes - the perpetrators will be hunted down and caught or killed. What we must school ourselves not to expect is a televisual display of technicolour force that seems to do it all at once, a grand climactic. And what we must school ourselves to withstand is the gruesome spectacle that may be made of an unlucky few whom we have sent to fight this war for us.

Alan Judd is the author of Breed of Heroes and its sequel Legacy (published by HarperCollins, £16.99)